Recovering International Relations

The Promise of Sustainable Critique

Daniel Levine

Charts a radically different course for critical theory than is currently practiced in IR.

Undertakes an exhaustive survey of both 'American school' and critical international theory.

Sets out a workable agenda for future IR research, which fuses critical, positive and hermeneutic theory together in ways that could lay a foundation for a broad variety of different studies in world politics.

Recovering International Relations

The Promise of Sustainable Critique

Daniel Levine

Description

Recovering International Relations bridges two key divides in contemporary IR: between 'value-free' and normative theory, and between reflective, philosophically inflected explorations of ethics in scholarship and close, empirical studies of practical problems in world politics. Featuring a novel, provocative and detailed survey of IR's development over the second half of the twentieth century, the work draws on early Frankfurt School social theory to suggest a new ethical and methodological foundation for the study of world politics-sustainable critique-which draws these disparate approaches together in light of their common aims, and redacts them in the face of their particular limitations. Understanding the discipline as a vocation as well as a series of academic and methodological practices, sustainable critique aims to balance the insights of normative and empirical theory against each other. Each must be brought to bear if scholarship is to meaningfully, and responsibly, address an increasingly dense, heavily armed, and persistently diverse world.

Recovering International Relations

The Promise of Sustainable Critique

Daniel Levine

Table of Contents

Tables

Figures

Introduction: Sustainable Critique and the Lost Vocation of International Relations The Lost Vocation Critique and the Loss of Vocation Sustainable Critique (1): The Problem of Reification Sustainable Critique (2): Reification in International Theory Sustainable Critique (3): Chastened Reason Plan of the Work

Chapter One: Between Comte and Catastrophe Sustainable Critique as an Ethical Commitment: The Animus Habitandi The Ethical Lacuna in IR: Three Examples From Critique to Sustainable Critique 'Non-Identity' and Negative Dialectics A Logical Impasse?

Conclusion: Toward Sustainably Critical International Theory The 'Hermeneutic Sphere': Toward a Sustainably Critical Research Program Sympathetic Knowledge A Working Example: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and IR 1. Building up the Hermeneutic 'Third Axis' 2. Constructing the Constellation: an Analytical Table of Contents The Constellar Production of Compassion Politics without Compassion: More of the Same?

Works Cited

Recovering International Relations

The Promise of Sustainable Critique

Daniel Levine

Author Information

Daniel J. Levine is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama.

Recovering International Relations

The Promise of Sustainable Critique

Daniel Levine

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the Sussex International Theory Prize 2013 and Runner-up for the Ethics Section of the International Studies Association Prize 2013 Winner of the 2013 Yale H. Ferguson Award

"...this already shows how thought-provoking and engaging Levine's work is. He deserves the highest praise, not only for the vigor of his argument but also for the clarity of his thought and style.. This might well be the best introduction to critical international relations theory. ... Highly recommended." --CHOICE